Service Level Agreement (SLA) in Utility Computing Systems

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of SLA management in utility computing systems, analyzing existing frameworks, use cases, and future challenges to improve service quality and customer satisfaction.

Contribution

It offers the first overall classification of SLA frameworks and discusses real-world use cases in Grid and Cloud computing environments.

Findings

Existing SLA frameworks vary widely in approach

Current systems show partial SLA realization

Emerging challenges include dynamic SLA management

Abstract

In recent years, extensive research has been conducted in the area of Service Level Agreement (SLA) for utility computing systems. An SLA is a formal contract used to guarantee that consumers' service quality expectation can be achieved. In utility computing systems, the level of customer satisfaction is crucial, making SLAs significantly important in these environments. Fundamental issue is the management of SLAs, including SLA autonomy management or trade off among multiple Quality of Service (QoS) parameters. Many SLA languages and frameworks have been developed as solutions; however, there is no overall classification for these extensive works. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to present a comprehensive survey of how SLAs are created, managed and used in utility computing environment. We discuss existing use cases from Grid and Cloud computing systems to identify the level of SLA realization in state-of-art systems and emerging challenges for future research.